I went to dinner last night at a good friend's, and there were beautiful Easter foods. I was the only Jew there, but didn't think about that till today. There were some Europeans, and a Muslim. A sense of American diversity. The Muslim described the alienation of living in France, when the French spoke of the French people going back to the Gauls. And I said, "The Israelis always cite the French as a model." The feeling in the room was that nationalism is passe.
I sat next to a Parisian and we talked about Israel/Palestine. So much that is coming clear to Americans has been obvious to Europeans for a while. I think that the body blows of 9/11, and Iraq, have had to be absorbed here slowly. The Iraq Study Group had just a few lines about Israel/Palestine. Now Obama is committed four-square, though of course it all may be too late. My dinner mate was amazed by the indifference to Gaza in the American press, and so am I of course. We had the conversation I'm always having now, anger at the affliction in Palestine.
My host speaks German, and I had brought him a Kafka book with the German and English side by side. I talked to him and the Parisian about the importance of Zionism to central European Jews between the wars, how important it was even to Kafka. And how little it speaks to my conditions in the U.S.
My host told a story from the Holocaust, of a Jewish landowner whose fields the German officers used for military exercises, until 1934, when he was suddenly dropped. Then he talked about the Wittgenstein family and the German efforts to confiscate its wealth by proving their Jewish origins.
I said, "Can it happen here? Can a Holocaust happen in the U.S.?"
My host said, "Anything can happen anywhere, that's the lesson." He had been in Argentina in the '80s. There were all the Ford Falcons without license plates that were used to disappear people. He was in an important man's office and the man said, "Why are people so fearful?" "Well because of the Ford Falcons without license plates," my friend said. "Oh we have gotten rid of that problem." "But I walked in and there were a dozen of them on the street right out front." They went to the window, and the Argentinian shook his head. He couldn't see them. Of course they were all there. It reminded me of Gaza. How many people here couldn't see all the dead children.
